New soccer facility coming to Allentown, and other company news

Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area is one of 65 national parks selected to receive a 2014 Ticket to Ride grant from the National Park Foundation.

Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area is one of 65 national parks selected to receive a 2014 Ticket to Ride grant from the National Park Foundation. (PETE SHAHEEN, TMC)

Soccer facility coming to Allentown. Check out where.

New soccer facility coming to Allentown

Sherman Street Soccer LLC has purchased an approximately 40,000-square-foot facility at 1344 Sherman St., Allentown, which it will convert into an indoor soccer and sports facility. Plans are to open the facility in November after renovations are completed.

"We're very excited about our new facility," said Greg Ramos, president of Sherman Street Soccer and executive director of FC Lehigh Valley United soccer club. "There is a tremendous demand for indoor fields for training and games. We will also accommodate lacrosse, field hockey and other sports with our world-class turf system," Ramos said.

Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area is one of 65 national parks selected to receive a 2014 Ticket to Ride grant from the National Park Foundation, the official charity of America's national parks.

The $8,000 grant will support Over the River and Thru the Woods — a three-part program that includes a pre-trip school visit, an outdoor field trip day, and a follow-up school visit for more than 500 third- and fourth-grade students, introducing them to the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area and their partners at the Pocono Environmental Education Center.

Now in its third year, the Ticket to Ride program provides the much-needed funds to make national park field trips possible for schools across the country.

"We know that one of the greatest barriers keeping America's youth from visiting their national parks is access to transportation," said Neil Mulholland, president and CEO of the National Park Foundation. "Through our Ticket to Ride program, we eliminate that barrier and open up a world of experiential learning in our nation's largest classrooms — our national parks — and help inspire stewardship of these treasured places."

The 2014 Ticket to Ride grants were made possible, in large part, through the support of Bayer USA Foundation, Disney and Subaru of America. For the full list of park recipients, and their projects, visit the Ticket to Ride page on the National Park Foundation website.

For more information on the National Park Foundation and how to support and protect America's national parks, go online to http://www.nationalparks.org. For more information on the National Park Service, visit http://www.nps.gov.

Zzyzx Polymers receives grant

The National Science Foundation has recently awarded Zzyzx Polymers a $737,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant.

The grant will support research and development efforts on the company's plastic polymers manufacturing process. This SBIR Phase II project will demonstrate the first commercial-scale processing of post-consumer plastic materials for high-value applications using an innovative approach known as continuous mechanochemical compatibilization.

The potential impact of this technology is large. In 2010, only 8 percent of the 230 million tons of plastic waste generated in the nation was recovered for recycling. Unfortunately, the recycling industry continues to struggle with both recovery rates and the processing of recovered plastics. The vast majority of unrecoverable plastic is directed to solid waste streams or landfills, resulting in poor use of nonrenewable resources and contributing to environmental contamination. The Zzyzx Polymers project will focus on using CMC to recycle materials without the need for extensive cleaning or sorting, thereby reducing processing steps, and returning value to these materials in a more cost-competitive way.

Zzyzx Polymers was recently accepted into the business incubation program at the Bridgeworks Enterprise Center, a program of the Allentown Economic Development Corp. The company has begun setting up its manufacturing equipment in the incubator and is aiming to start producing prototype plastic resins by the end of the summer. Additionally, Zzyzx Polymers has been selected to receive an investment by Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania.

"The support provided by Bridgeworks and Ben Franklin Technology Partners were key to helping us obtain this grant," said Mark Tapsak, one of the co-founders of the company. "The comments we received back from the NSF specifically pointed out that they were impressed with the support from the commonwealth and with the great startup ecosystem in the Lehigh Valley."

"These are the types of companies that we have been actively recruiting," explains Anthony Durante, program manager for AEDC. "Zzyzx Polymers is working on an innovative process that potentially has a huge impact on the world and in industry. Having these next-generation-of-manufacturing type companies in our program is simply awesome."

In addition to the environmental benefits, the success of the Phase II project could have a significant economic impact. It has been found that processing recycled materials creates approximately nine jobs for every 15,000 tons of material recovered per year. If Zzyzx Polymers is successful in commercializing their process, the improved availability of high-quality recycled plastics could improve their use in consumer products and could lead to an increase in green jobs.